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The history of the second Persian war as presented in most of the modern literature is solely based on Herodotus’ Histories. However, Herodotus’ narration seems to contain several unrealistic elements which raise doubts about the actual strategy of the Greek alliance. In this article we present an alternative interpretation of Herodotus'... [continue reading]

Thermopylae is a mountain pass near the sea in northern Greece which was the site of several battles in antiquity, the most famous being that between Persians and Greeks in August 480 BCE. Despite being greatly inferior in numbers, the Greeks held the narrow pass for three days with Spartan King Leonidas fighting a last-ditch defence with a small force... [continue reading]

Fast, manoeuvrable, and with a bronze-sheathed ram on the prow, the trireme (Greek triērēs) was the devastating warship which permitted Athens to build her maritime empire and dominate the Aegean in the 5th century BCE. Most scholars credit the Phoenicians with first inventing the trireme which was itself an adaptation of the earlier bireme. According... [continue reading]

The hull of the Olympias, a full-scale reconstruction of an ancient Greek trireme warship. The principal strategy in battle of the trireme was to sink or damage the oars of an enemy vessel using the bronze ram fixed to the ship's prow. Triremes were used throughout antiquity and used most famously in the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE when the allied Greek fleet defeated that of Persian king Xerxes.

Xerxes I (ruled 486-465 BCE), also known as Xerxes the Great, was the king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. His official title was Shahanshah which, though usually translated as `emperor’, actually means `king of kings’. He is identified as the Ahasuerus of Persia in the biblical Book of Esther (although his son, Artaxerxes I, is also a possibility... [continue reading]